Technically, you have the right to fire your attorney at any time. There can be multiple reasons for firing your attorney, including poor communication, lack of expertise, ethical issues, billing practices, or disagreements with the attorney’s advice.
However, things can be different depending on the stage where the legal representation is. Generally speaking, as the case proceeds, it gets progressively difficult or complicated to fire your attorney.
Once the case has reached the trial stage, it can be too late to fire an attorney. By this time, significant work has been done and the attorney might have already worked on several stages, including discovery, filing motions, or doing other legal work.
While it is still possible to fire your attorney, it can involve considerable complexity. Firing an attorney at this stage will inevitably cause delays in the trial. The new attorney is likely to take time in preparing for the trial and will likely have to retrace the steps of the previous attorney in understanding all aspects of the case.
Additionally, firing the attorney at the trial stage might also involve the court and the judge. While judges are strongly in favor of people’s right to hire their attorney, they also have to consider how a substitution of counsel (hiring a new lawyer) will affect the trial. That said, a court is unlikely to stand in the way of someone firing their attorney.
However, it is definitely too late to fire your attorney once a judgment or a settlement is reached. Even if a court ruling is pending, firing your attorney can have an impact on your case, since there’s still a good amount of legal work to be done.
There’s a good chance that a judge won’t allow you to switch lawyers at this time, unless thoroughly convinced that it can improve your chances of legal representation at this stage. And that is extremely rare.
It’s worth noting that you are still liable to pay for the attorney fee for the legal work done before firing them. If the litigation was related to a contingency case, the fired attorney can hold a lien on the settlement amount or judgment to charge for the work rendered up to the time of termination of service.